Cutting calories is commonplace in dieting, but eliminating too many calories from your diet can actually lead to some significant health issues. Before you start a diet that only allows you to eat as little as 1,000 calories a day, check with your health care provider to ensure that it's the right thing to do for weight loss.
Sustainable Amount
A 1,000 calories a day diet doesn't give you much food to keep you from feeling full. There are entire meals that have more than 1,000 calories, including cheeseburgers and pasta dishes. While these foods aren't the healthiest options, neither is putting yourself on a 1,000-calorie diet. While you'd most likely lose weight, the other negative health effects are not worth the weight loss. A better idea than a 1,000 calorie diet is to find a diet you can live with, that isn't so restrictive and that helps you to meet your weight loss goals.
Effectiveness
Freedieting.com lists a diet that does manage to get under the 1,000 calorie threshold, but it's a diet that is difficult to sustain long term. Each meal is small, thereby leaving you unfulfilled and susceptible to going off the diet. If a diet keeps you starving and wanting to cheat, odds are good that it's not a very effective diet. Furthermore, the site itself states that the diet should only be followed by the smallest of women who do not participate in exercise, as it would be dangerous for any other build or level of activity.
Dangers
A 1,000 calorie per day diet is dangerous because you're not giving your body enough energy to function properly. Though you will certainly lose weight in the short term by eating so little, you'll also expose yourself to serious ailments such as muscular atrophy and heart disease. Worse yet, the weight you lose at first isn't indicative of what you'll lose later; as your body adjusts to the 1,000 calorie diet, you'll stop losing weight, and you won't be able to cut any calories because you're already eating so few as it is.
Recommended Calorie Intake
Everyone's caloric requirements are different and vary based on your activity level and current weight. Calorie calculators, such as the one on MayoClinic.com, can help you determine a safe level of calorie intake. From there, you can figure out how much to cut out of your diet to lose weight. For example, if your recommended caloric intake is 2,000 calories, you'd have to cut down to 1,500 calories to lose a pound a week. This is based on the fact that 1 lb. contains 3,500 calories; if you reduce your intake by 3,500 calories over the course of a week, you'll lose 1 lb.
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